Mo’ne Davis is perhaps the most unique college athlete ever. But at the same time the freshman middle infielder on the Hampton University women’s softball team is no different than any other college student, and that’s how she wants to be treated.
Never mind that at age 14 she became the first African-American girl to compete in the Little League World Series with an all-star team from Philadelphia and the first girl in history to pitch a shutout and earn a win.
Disregard that Time magazine named her one of The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014, and Sports Illustrated Kids named her SportsKid of the Year for 2014. So, what if Spike Lee directed and produced a documentary about her titled, Mo’ne Davis: I Throw Like a Girl, and American League MVP Mike Trout and NBA MVP Kevin Durant sent her congratulatory messages.
“I came here to get an education,’’ Davis says of becoming a Hampton Pirate. “That’s the bigger picture. We’re all here to graduate.’’
All the students at Hampton may well be there to graduate. But Davis is the only one who had an ESPN camera crew shadow her on her first day of classes in August. Nor did any of them participate in the 2015 NBA Celebrity All-Star Game or have a memoir written by Hilary Beard titled, Mo’ne Davis: Remember My Name: My Story from First Pitch to Game Changer released in 2015.
There is no doubt that Davis is a bona fide celebrity. She met President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Today Show, Good Morning America and CBS This Morning all before her 16th birthday. But when it came time for her to introduce herself to her new teammates during the Lady Pirates’ first team meeting, she could easily have said, “I’m Mo’ne Davis. Y’all know who I am.’’ Instead, she simply stood up and said, “I’m Mo’ne,’’ and in her words “kept pushing.’’
“Our biggest thing is we want her to be like everybody else, and she wants to be like everybody else,’’ says Hampton coach Angela Nicholson. “That seems to be the way that it’s fitting now. She knows there are other things that come along with it because of who she is. But we want to make sure she remains a student athlete first.’’
